Kowtowing to US must stop

Our sense of independence has flagged; we have rolled back into an easy accommodation with the foreign policy objectives of the United States. More latterly, our respect for the foreign policy objectives of the US has superimposed itself on what should otherwise be the foreign policy objectives of Australia.

In the 20 years since I put the APEC Leaders’ Meeting together, China has become the second major economic power in the world; it does not need us to help construct its foreign policy, any more than the US needs us to insinuate ourselves onto China to its account.

Even states like Indonesia are dubious of us because they do not see us making our way in the world or their world other than in a manner deferential to other powers, especially the US.

After playing the deputy sheriff,
John Howard
had us dancing to the tune of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan, while upon the release of the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that
Kevin Rudd
, as prime minister of Australia, had been advising the US to reserve the military option against them. During the current prime ministership, that of
Julia Gillard
, US President
Barack Obama
made an oral and policy assault on China and its polity, from the lower chamber of our Parliament House. This brought immediate pangs of disquiet from the Indonesian Foreign Minister and later from his President.

The secular change in the diminished growth potential of the West vis-a-vis that of Asia and South Asia and the “catch up" in productivity and living standards there will mean that, from now on, our security linkages with “the West" will seem more incongruous.

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We have to concentrate on where we can be effective and make the greatest difference. I believe that is fundamentally in South-East Asia. It occupies the fulcrum between South-West Asia and North-East Asia; the fortunes of the Indian Ocean and the sub-continent in relation to those of continental Asia, China and the western Pacific.

Northern Australia is adjacent to the fulcrum point. It is completely natural, therefore, that Australia be engaged there; certainly, with Indonesia but preferably, with the wider ASEAN. In the longer run we should be a member of it, formalising the many trade, commercial and political interests we already share. This is the natural place for Australia to belong; indeed, the one to which we should attribute primacy.

In recent years our relations with countries like Indonesia and Malaysia have been focused on issues of marginal long-term significance such as refugee management and live cattle exports. Meanwhile, policy towards our nearest and largest neighbour, Indonesia, has languished, lacking framework, judgments of magnitude and coherence. It’s as if Indonesia remains as it was before the Asian financial crisis, before its remarkable transition to democracy and the refiring of its wealth machinery.

Indonesia remains the place where Australia’s strategic bread is buttered. No country is more important to us – and it is a country which has shown enormous tolerance and goodwill towards us. Focus on this country should be a major imperative driving our foreign policy. No major power in or beyond the wider region could hope to have the capacity to project forces towards Australia, certainly to our north and west, without needing to transit Indonesia.

Already, on a purchasing power parity basis, the Indonesian economy is larger than our own. With the ubiquity of technology and capital, Indonesia’s economy is likely to be at least twice as large as Australia’s and, in time, even larger.

Indonesia is building the weight to stand on its own feet, both economically and militarily, against anything that might come its way – either from the South China Sea or the Indian Ocean. The question is what will that weight mean for us? An adversary with whom we failed to come to terms in good times or a partner to share common cause in our own view of the region and the wider world? Whichever way we cut it, Australia must lay a bigger bet on its relationship with Indonesia.

We are now compelled to be more relevant to the dynamic region around us. Our opportunities to exercise independence and independence of action will be greater than ever. Not to measure up to this challenge would be to risk being seen as a derivative power, perpetually in search of a strategic guarantor, a Western outpost, unable to confidently make its own way in the world. Surely we have reached the point where we have to turn away from that, recognise the realities of our geography and strike out on our own.